


Graceland

by tolstayas



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, but then again since when do i write fics that have plots?, mostly an aesthetic fic, there isnt really a plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15352122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolstayas/pseuds/tolstayas
Summary: “Would the King really have me killed?”(A touch of longing in her voice, and perhaps the disappointment of betrayal, and the sour taste of undeserved affections.)There was moment’s hesitation. Pity was written across Sophie’s face when she spoke. “Politics is not a game, I’m afraid. I suppose you loved him?”





	Graceland

Sophie would not have agreed to stop so early in the evening, had it not been for -- well, for everything, really, and nothing in particular.

 

(The way everything adds up to make us do one inexplicable thing or another, the way everything is the cause of everything else, and it has all been happening forever…) 

 

It was sunset, and the air was sleepy and thick with the dampness of recent rain; both of them could hear the trickling of a nearby stream; and Eleanor had scuffed the back of her hand on a tree branch, and scraped her ankle on a bramble, and winced dramatically at every jolt.

 

“Let me see your ankle,” Sophie said, after a long, exhausted silence. 

 

The cuts weren’t deep, but Eleanor flinched when her fingers brushed the skin. Sophie frowned, then lifted the hem of her own dress to her lips and tore off a strip of lace between her teeth.

 

(Soaked in the icy stream, and applied with a gentleness Sophie barely remembered in herself, the bandage served its purpose - to soothe, to placate. ) 

 

“Thank you,” whispered Eleanor. 

 

She even smiled. 

 

Sophie only nodded.

 

“How long have we left to go?”

 

“Not very long now. Two more days at most.”

 

“And what will I do there?”

 

Sophie sighed. This was not the first time the question had been asked. “You will enter the court of William of Orange, where you will be safe.”

 

“Would the King really have me killed?” 

 

(A touch of longing in her voice, and perhaps the disappointment of betrayal, and the sour taste of undeserved affections.)

 

There was moment’s hesitation. Pity was written across Sophie’s face when she spoke. “Politics is not a game, I’m afraid. I suppose you loved him?”

 

“Doesn’t everyone?”

 

“That is the expectation.”

 

“Don’t you?”

 

Sophie looked up at the sky. The sun was setting, all violet and fire. “No.”

 

“You betrayed him?”

 

The question struck Sophie strangely for a moment, asked so innocently, without judgement. Well, it couldn’t be quite  _ without _ judgement; but it was almost as if it were.

 

“Yes. And now I’m doing it again.”

 

Eleanor nodded, almost solemn. They were silent, again, for a moment, side by side, shoulders almost touching.

 

“Thank you,” Eleanor said, again. There wasn’t much else to say.

 

Sophie smiled then, a sort of forlorn little smile.

 

“We should sleep,” she said, but made no move from where she was sitting. “We need to leave before dawn. Or they’ll find us, and we’ll never get there at all.”

 

Eleanor seemed not to hear her. Her eyes were trained on the patch of earth between them, her hand drifting, breaking stalks of grass between her fingers.

 

“I was told you were a widow,” she mused.

 

Sophie almost flinched. “Yes.”

 

“And?”

 

“He died. Men do.”

 

“Did you love him?”

 

A sharp intake of breath. “He was... a horrible man.”

 

A pause. “And afterwards?”

 

“I had a lover. He took me to Holland.”

 

“Like this?” 

 

(Eleanor’s voice was oddly quiet. She had never been timid at court. The forest seemed to frighten her.)

 

Sophie smiled. “A little bit like this, yes. But, before you ask…” She trailed off.

 

“You didn’t love him?”

 

“Well, I thought I did. Perhaps that’s what counts.” 

 

“What about the policeman? The one who - ” Eleanor stopped. A pained look had come over Sophie’s face. A pause. “I understand,” she whispered.

 

Sophie said nothing.

 

Eleanor’s fingers were still drifting in the grass, closer and closer to Sophie’s dress, and now she reached out and took Sophie’s hand in hers.

 

Long silence.

 

“You said we would be there in two days.” Eleanor spoke softly.

 

Sophie nodded.

 

“I don’t want to go.” A whisper, barely audible.

 

Sophie closed her eyes.

 

***

 

Morning came softly, unthreateningly. Sophie woke with a weight on her chest, a strange feeling of warmth, something tickling her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open. 

 

(Eleanor’s face was buried in her shoulder, one arm thrown across her chest.)

 

As anxious as Sophie should have been about the risk of their capture, the soft beauty of it all set her at ease. The paleness of the light, the crispness of the dew-drenched grass, the faint, early birdsong. Strands of Eleanor’s dark hair floating in the clear air. The dull red tinge to her sleeping cheek, the gentle way the two of them were intertwined.

 

So she waited, and watched the sun reach up through the sky, casting its glow on Eleanor’s face - her lips, her eyelids. The hand that lay loosely wrapped around her, as if still reaching out to comfort, to console, to sympathize.

 

Almost without thinking, Sophie lifted a hand and traced the line of the girl’s arm in the rising sunlight, trailed her fingers over her wrist and palm and the tips of her fingers.

 

Eleanor stirred.

 

Sophie started, and jerked her hand back; Eleanor smiled a lethargic smile before slowly opening her eyes.

 

“Good morning,” murmured Sophie.

 

(Eleanor hummed back sleepily. She seemed not to realize how closely she was lying against her companion.) 

 

A moment passed. Eleanor yawned. 

 

“Oh, I desperately need a bath,” she sighed. At once Sophie heard the sound of the spring flowing nearby, trickling and babbling between her words, as if in agreement. “Must we go on at once? Couldn’t we stop for a day?”

 

Sophie was silent. They  _ couldn’t _ , of course they couldn’t. But then… The light was very beautiful. The air was very silent. Eleanor’s voice was very soft.

 

And would they really be pursued? Would he --

 

“All right,” she nodded. “Today we rest.”

 

Eleanor’s eyes widened. Her incredulous “Really?” could be read from her face before it had left her lips. Sophie thought that her downfall was this -- that she was so clear, so easy, so unassuming. It was her bright eyes that had betrayed her, her twitching lips.

 

“Yes. Really.”

 

***

 

Somehow it had happened. 

 

(There had been playful laughter -- Eleanor’s to begin with, but Sophie found something about it so infectious, so impossible to resist, that she joined in as well, inevitably, against all her best instincts. 

 

There had been clothes flung carelessly in the grass, again only Eleanor’s to begin with, until her pleading and sighing coaxed Sophie into the water with her.) 

 

There was a waterfall nearby, and the two clambered over slippery rocks towards it and squealed at the chill of the spray. They took turns running back and forth under the flow of the waterfall, laughing at their own apprehension.

 

Sophie had stopped protesting, had almost stopped worrying. Some other feeling had drowned it all out. Something good; she wasn't sure what. She didn't want to stop to think about it. 

 

And then -- somehow. 

 

They had miscalculated, or maybe they hadn't; it was an accident, or maybe it wasn't. 

 

But somehow they both darted in at the same time, and one of them slipped, or maybe both of them did, or maybe neither of them, and suddenly they were clinging to each other under the waterfall, with the sound of its tumble and crash surrounding them. 

 

There were someone's hands on someone's hips, someone gripping someone's shoulders. 

 

They weren't sure who kissed first.

 

Each hoped that it was not themselves, but suspected that it might have been. Neither wanted to risk asking. 

 

Well, somehow it happened. 

 

Both would insist that they had never imagined doing such a thing. And yet their lips met, and neither pulled away. The water flowed, and they held each other very close.

 

They drifted out of the waterfall, eventually, and then onto the grass, never quite drifting apart. 

 

Somehow.

 

***

 

Afterwards they lay on their stomachs in the grass, in their underthings, and spoke in soft voices. 

 

Sophie remembered something she had heard about at Versailles. 

 

“The former Duchess of Orleans,” she said, “Henrietta of England, died a terrible death…” A pause. “Her last words, or some of her last words, are said to be --  _ Let me bathe in the lake, feel the sun, let me feel the sun upon me. _ ”

 

“Very poetic,” smiled Eleanor. 

 

“I don't know why I just thought of that.”

 

“Perhaps because --” A wave of Eleanor’s hand in the direction of the waterfall. 

 

“Perhaps.”

 

(Sometimes the most important thing is also the most beautiful, and that's how you know.)

 

“We should go,” muttered Sophie after a while. 

 

“We could stay.”

 

“We'll both be killed.”

 

“It would make a beautiful love story. Like  _ Tristan and Isolde. _ ”

 

Sophie didn't reply. Of course they had to leave. Of course she didn't want to. 

 

“Or we could go. I'll go if you're with me.”

 

(Love is also a fight for survival. Especially this kind of love. Especially this kind of fight.)

 

Sophie smiled, but stayed silent. 

 

“Well?”

 

A nod. 

 

“Together.”


End file.
